Western Australia
February 23, 2012
A workshop in Western Australia this autumn will finetune advisers’ cereal disease management skills, benefiting growers in what could be a high risk year for foliar diseases.
The Cereal Foliar Disease Management Workshop for Advisers in Perth on March 28-29 is supported by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), Bayer CropScience and Rust Bust, and is one of four similar events being held across Australia.
Workshop facilitator John Cameron, of ICAN Rural, said more workshops could be held in the future, depending on demand, and encouraged advisers interested in participating to contact him at john@icanrural.com.au
He said consultants participating in the workshop would gain new and valuable understanding by discussing a range of cereal foliar diseases with leading experts and cereal pathologists.
“The event will provide the time and experience we need to discuss issues of regional importance and how this is reflected in advice to growers,” Mr Cameron said.
He said the economic implications of various management strategies for different seasons, diseases and locations with varying disease risks would be a focus of the event.
“We will discuss how to tie together those many variables and develop an economically viable, targeted management strategy,” Mr Cameron said.
Those speaking at the Perth workshop would include leading New Zealand agronomist Nick Poole, of the Foundation for Arable Research New Zealand (FARNZ), and leading cereal pathologists Geoff Thomas, Kith Jayasena and Ciara Beard, of the Department of Agriculture and Food (DAFWA), as well as Fran Lopez-Ruiz, of Curtin University.
The workshop will cover issues including:
- Cereal growth stages and spray decisions;
- Identifying which leaves are emerging based on stem dissection;
- The impact of environment and day degrees on crop and disease development;
- Understanding where new and old fungicides fit – how they work, how they should be applied and resistance status;
- Identify key intervention points for disease management in cereals and relate to environment, genetics and the development of cost effective disease management plans;
- Identify canopy management interactions and relate this to decisions on foliar disease management;
- Management strategies for key cereal diseases in wheat and barley;
- Managing emerging disease issues such as triazole resistance in powdery mildew and cereal head diseases.
Rust Bust, which is helping to support the event, is an initiative of the ACRCP consultative committee, supported by the GRDC.
For more information about Rust Bust visit www.rustbust.com.au
Information on diseases including rust can also be found at www.grdc.com.au/diseaselinks
Photo: Participants at a Cereal Foliar Disease Management Workshop for Advisers in Albany, 2011. Photo by Craig White, Bayer CropScience.
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